Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — The Senate is expected to take a key vote today that would smooth the path for an
eventual showdown over President Barack Obama’s health-care plan, but the midday vote is likely to
inflame a war within the Republican Party.

A group of Republican senators tried to launch an old-fashioned filibuster yesterday, despite
pleas from party leadership to back off.

“I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand,” said
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, as he kicked off the effort. Behind him was an army of Senate allies and
grass-roots conservatives, defying Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other
top Republicans who want to limit debate. They figure the Democratic-run Senate will never agree to
strip the health-care money.

Fight anyway, said conservative interest groups. “This is the ultimate betrayal,” the Senate
Conservatives Fund said of the Senate’s top two Republicans, McConnell and John Cornyn of Texas.
The Club for Growth said it would include the debate vote on its 2014 congressional scorecard.

The Senate is considering legislation that the Republican-led House passed on Friday. It would
keep the government running through Dec. 15 while defunding Obamacare.

McConnell countered that the bill is what he and other Republicans want, so why delay? “We’d all
be hard-pressed to explain why we were opposed to a bill we were in favor of,” he said.

Cruz’s backers argued that Democrats will put the funding back in eventually, a point reiterated
by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “I want to be very, very clear again: The Senate will
not pass any bill that defunds or delays Obamacare,” he said yesterday after a meeting with Senate
Democrats.

If some agreement on funding isn’t reached by Tuesday, when the new fiscal year begins, parts of
the government will begin shutting down. Essential services and operations, such as national
security, would continue.

Few on either side of the debate say they want a shutdown, aware that it’s highly unpopular with
the public.

“I just don’t happen to think filibustering a bill that defunds Obamacare is the best route to
defunding Obamacare,” McConnell said. “All it does is shut down the government and keep Obamacare
funded. And none of us want that.”

But he’s unable to quell an influential chunk of his caucus. Senate Republicans met privately
yesterday, and many urged Cruz to drop his delaying tactics. Cruz, a potential 2016 presidential
contender, would not.

“I told my wife I now pick up the newspapers each day to learn what a scoundrel I am, and just
what attack will come,” he said. It’s time, Cruz said, that lawmakers listen to their constituents,
and they don’t like the new health-care law and feel increasingly alienated.

Republicans pressured by the staunch conservatives are fighting back. Let vulnerable Democratic
senators oppose defunding, they say, and then “the question ought to be why can’t red state
Democrats listen to their own constituents,” Cornyn said.

McConnell, like many incumbent Republicans likely to vote to cut off debate, faces enormous
pressure as he seeks re-election next year. Businessman Matt Bevin, who’s challenging McConnell for
the Republican Senate nomination in Kentucky, was quick to side with Cruz.